Kuwait: what happens after the oil runs out?

Every country is unhappy in its own way. In Kuwait, the issue inspiring popular discontent is the dearth of parking spaces in the capital, Kuwait City, where drivers, businesses and the government are discovering that 100,000 cars into 60,000 parking spaces just won’t go.

Yet the parking problem is only a symbol of the people’s disenchantment. Their resentment of recent austerity measures – specifically an attempt to close the $15bn deficit by raising the price of oil and other subsidised commodities – led them to vote out half the incumbents in elections for the 50-member National Assembly at the end of November.